Commentary
Biden on Immigration: Weaker Borders and Less EnforcementBiden’s first one hundred days have shown the results of his immigration agenda. How many of his voters are experiencing buyer’s remorse?
By Robert Law
The National Interest, April 30, 2021
Excerpt: Immigration was largely absent from the 2020 campaign, so millions of Americans voted for Joe Biden in November without really knowing what his immigration policies would entail. Now they know.
An open letter to Biden appointees at ICE: Don't be the fall guy
The anti-enforcement agenda you've been forced to carry out was developed by opponents of national borders
By Jon Feere
Washington Times, April 26, 2021
Excerpt: As an ICE official in the prior administration, I recognize that a change in management means a change in practices. But I am concerned you are being used by the Biden administration to advance policies that your leadership knows will endanger the lives of countless people. The sooner you demand a change of course, the better it will be for public safety and your own conscience.
Kamala Harris’s Inaction as Border Czar
Maybe the Biden administration just wants open borders; that would explain a lot
I recently asked “What Is ‘Border Czar’ Kamala Harris Doing on the Border Crisis?” My answer was “not much” as the country faces an unprecedented crisis at the Southwest Border. Nor has much changed in the interim, but maybe the Biden administration likes it that way.
Two points to begin.
First, the White House has been somewhat vague about Harris’s responsibilities in this role, which President Biden assigned the vice president on March 24. As Newsweek has explained, the administration “has struggled to make clear which problems Harris would tackle and which are outside of her domain.” Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, has not done much to clarify things.
Psaki has “shut down ideas that the vice president is in charge of the current migrant situation,” indicating instead that Harris “is only focused on the root causes.” The administration has identified those “root causes” as “[p]overty, high levels of violence, and corruption” in Central America and Mexico, so addressing those issues is likely Harris’s job.
As I have noted previously, there is another (sort-of) “border czar”, former Ambassador Roberta Jacobson. But Jacobson is out at the end of the month, no successor to her has been named, and it has never really been clear what all her job entailed.
Second, as bad as the situation at the border has become, the White House has been reluctant to deem it a “crisis”. The weekend before last, the president slipped up and used the term, only to have the White House clean it up and explain that Biden "was referring to the crisis in Central America — the dire circumstances so many are fleeing from” and not the government’s response.
I will return to that point, below.
Even if you limit Harris’s duties to simply addressing institutional factors south of the border, however, it does not appear that she has done much in her new role. Logically, even if she were just the White House’s legate to the countries from which most illegal migrants hail (Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras), she would start by taking a look at conditions at the border itself. She hasn’t thus far.
On the diplomatic front, in my April 8 post, I noted that the vice president had a phone call with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei on March 30, but the read-out of that call shows that it was mostly perfunctory and duplicative of earlier efforts.
Nor was Harris’s April 7 call with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador any more substantive. There were a lot of reaffirmations, and thanks, and agreements to continue to work together, but nothing that really looks like a plan, or even an outline of a plan (or outline of an outline).
Those two calls are the sum total of the vice president’s efforts over more than a month to stem the tide of migrants entering illegally. What gives?
Given the lack of transparency, I can only guess. My one inevitable conclusion, however, is that the Biden administration refuses to call the situation at the border a crisis because it does not view it as one.
There are certainly plenty of reasons to conclude that the border is in crisis, and in a bad way.
Border Patrol apprehended more migrants entering illegally at the Southwest border in March (168,195) than in any month in the last 20 years (since March 2001); more unaccompanied alien children (UACs, 18,663) than in any month in recorded history (back to October 2009); and more adults and children in family units (FMUs, 52,904) than in any month for which records are kept (back to October 2012) except for four months at the height of the “border emergency” in 2019.
As a consequence, according to CNN, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is responsible for sheltering most unaccompanied children under a 2008 law, is now caring for 21,000 of them — shattering its old record of UACs in its shelters by about 50 percent.
Under that 2008 law, those children are generally supposed to be sent to HHS by DHS within 72 hours, but in early April they remained in DHS custody for an average of 122 hours (more than two extra days).
And, pursuant to section 235(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), migrants in family units are supposed to be quickly removed if they do not have asylum claims (and detained until their claims are heard if they do, with judicially imposed restrictions), but the Biden administration has been releasing most adult migrants with children within 72 hours.
Even then, the administration has had to enter into a controversial $87 million contract to house families in hotels (although some of those hotels are reportedly backing out).
The administration previously stated it would expel those families, as well as single adult migrants, under Trump-era expulsion orders issued by the CDC under Title 42 of the U.S. Code in response to the pandemic. While the Mexican government has agreed to accept the adults, the government can only expel non-Mexican-national families if the Mexican government has the “capacity” to accept them.
Mexico must not have much “capacity”, because only about 17,000 of the almost 53,000 migrants in family units apprehended in March (32 percent of the total) were expelled back across the border.
The problem has gotten so bad that not only have those families not been quickly removed under section 235(b) of the INA, or expelled under Title 42, but the government has been releasing some of them without Notices to Appear (NTAs), the immigration charges that would place them into non-detained removal proceedings.
DHS’s failure to issue them NTAs will allow those aliens to remain in the United States indefinitely (if not forever), and require ICE to keep track of them (assuming it even knows they are in this country).
Simply put, the government is so overwhelmed at the border that it cannot even comply with U.S. laws. That’s the definition of a “crisis”, to me, one that would logically prompt Vice President Harris to do more than make a couple of phone calls.
All of that assumes, however, that the Biden administration believes that allowing tens of thousands of migrants to enter illegally and be released into the United States, and thereby to remain here (in most cases) forever, is a problem. My error may well be my failure to appreciate the fact that the Biden administration does not think that is a problem.
The Biden administration might like the status quo just fine. It would explain the administration’s refusal to deem the rapidly devolving situation at the Southwest border a crisis, the lack of action on Harris’s part, and the fact that Jacobson is stepping down without an apparent successor.
And that conclusion may not be as crazy as it sounds.
An April 23 Politico article explains that Republicans are gearing up to use the president’s failures at the border as a wedge issue in the mid-term congressional elections in 2022. As I explained in an April 16 post, it appears to be a winning point for the GOP.
Deep down in that Politico article, however, is the following:
In a five-page memo obtained by POLITICO, [immigration-advocacy group] Immigration Hub cited internal polling that indicates immigration could be politically helpful to Democrats if they can better explain their policies. Sixty-three percent of nationwide voters, for example, approve of Biden’s approach to the border when introduced to it while 28 percent disapprove.
I am not sure how exactly you would have to spin the situation at the border to turn it to Biden’s advantage, but any objective observer would have to agree that wide swaths of the media are sympathetic to the president and to his party, and therefore are more than willing to help.
In my last post, I explained that the “pull factors” encouraging illegal immigration (loopholes in U.S. law and policy that could be easily closed) are much stronger than the “push factors” in migrants’ home countries (like poverty, crime, and corruption) prompting them to leave.
Few if any are even talking about those pull factors, however, even on Capitol Hill. Instead, the focus has been almost exclusively aligned with the administration’s talking points. The only critical commentary in most of the media to the administration’s position has been how poorly Biden has cared for migrants once they are here.
Time will tell if the Biden administration prefers what amounts to open borders, and whether this is a winning strategy for Democrats in the mid-terms. In the interim, however, it is more than appropriate to ask what exactly the vice president is doing to address the current immigrant surge. And to highlight what she isn’t doing.
Joe Biden Takes 94 Executive Actions on Immigration in 100 Days
President Joe Biden unleashed a flurry of 94 executive actions on immigration in his first 100 days, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute.
The president and his administration moved quickly to dismantle immigration enforcement measures put into place by former President Donald Trump, opening up the border to more illegal aliens and noncitizens.
Unattended migrants continue to rush the border after Biden ended Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy and other measures to reduce the flow of noncitizens crossing the border.
Under Biden, the Department of Homeland Security ordered Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stop targeting illegal aliens for removal unless they pose gang involvement or significant criminal charges. ICE cases are also subject to review, slowing, or reversing enforcement actions.
Criminal illegal aliens are also getting released from prison as a result of Biden’s new “sanctuary country” orders.
As a result, MPI reports, ICE arrests have decreased by more than 60 percent under Biden from the last full months of detention during the Trump administration in February 2020, before the pandemic.
The president also extended Temporary Protected Status for 320,000 Venezuelans and 1,600 Burmese, ended Trump’s public charge rule requiring immigrants to be financially independent, and terminated Trump’s travel and visa restrictions.
Biden even scrapped a new more difficult citizenship civics test that former President Trump enacted for immigrants.
The remarkable speed of Biden’s executive actions has dramatically exceeded the first 100 days of the Trump administration, as the former president enacted fewer than 30 executive actions on immigration.
Profiteers of Biden Administration’s Open Borders Policy
Malfeasance has it rewards.
It has been said that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
The border crisis endangers national security, public health and public safety, yet for the Biden administration, the border crisis that creates consternation for most Americans, incredibly, is viewed as a success story by Biden and the radicalized Democrat Party.
As you will see shortly, Biden immigration policies are also important to human traffickers, drug smugglers, terrorist groups and American companies that move the money of all of the above and, incredibly, even the “fees” and ransom money paid to the human traffickers by aliens’ family members.
As I noted in my recent article, Biden Amps Up The Immigration Delivery System, the Biden administration’s refusal to declare a border crisis is more than a matter of semantics.
Over the past several decades, globalists in both major political parties have come to see immigration as a delivery system rather than a law enforcement system that is dedicated to protecting America and Americans.
This immigration delivery system delivers a virtually unlimited supply of cheap exploitable workers (and not just the illegal aliens who perform economic bottom rung low-skilled, physically demanding menial jobs, but increasing numbers of highly skilled alien workers who are granted visas to work legally in the United States). This delivery system also delivers a nearly unlimited number of foreign tourists (hence the continually expanding Visa Waiver Program), a huge number of foreign students including students from adversarial nations such as China, and a virtually unlimited number of clients for immigration law firms. Indeed, there are a significant number of immigration lawyers in both political parties.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform was never intended to get the “aliens out of the shadows” but to motivate aliens to head for the waiting rooms of immigration law firms.
To actually get the aliens out of the shadows, our government would need more ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents). But the hiring of more ICE agents has never been considered by either political party. Such agents would not only arrest illegal aliens but would likely uncover crooked employers, crooked lawyers and interfere with the immigration delivery system.
These politicians know where “their bread is buttered” and understand that they must act to satisfy the demands of those who write the fat checks. Simply stated, the term “campaign contribution” is Orwellian Newspeak for the actual appropriate term: “Bribe.”
No administration, however, has had the unmitigated chutzpah and utter contempt for the safety of America and Americans to do what the Biden administration is now doing, making an obvious concerted effort to remove any and all deterrents against illegal immigration and essentially put control of America’s southern border under the de facto control of the drug cartels and human traffickers (often one and the same).
Biden Cripples Immigration Law Enforcement, his Executive Orders handcuff agents - and set law violators free.
In the past, the Border Patrol checked transportation facilities such as bus stations, train stations and airports to locate and arrest illegal aliens who evaded detection by the Border Patrol and were then heading to the interior of the United States.
Under Biden’s policies, however, the overwhelmed Border Patrol is now driving illegal aliens to bus terminals so that they can head for the interior of the United States!
Some of these aliens are not even being given immigration court dates because, as it now stands, the system is so overloaded that hearings for these aliens won’t be possible for years.
The failure to deter illegal immigration has encouraged a human tsunami of foreign nationals, from all over the world, including countries that sponsor terrorism, to head for the United States.
This has created a huge opportunity for the human traffickers and gangs to make unprecedented profits as more aliens seek their “services.”
On April 20, 2021 Vice reported, US Companies Are Helping Mexican Cartels Get Rich Kidnapping Migrants, noting that the wave of migration at the border is a boon for kidnappers, human smugglers, and the American businesses that handle their money.
Here is an important excerpt from the Vice report:
VICE World News reviewed 40 ransom payments made through money transfers in eight different kidnapping cases from 2014 through January of this year. Virtually all of the money flowed through U.S. companies, mostly through Western Union and MoneyGram but also Walmart and lesser-known companies like Ria. By our rough estimate, criminal organizations in Mexico have made around $800 million on migrant kidnappings alone over the past decade, and money-transfer companies received a cut on nearly every transaction through fees and exchange rates. American corporations are profiting from kidnappings.
Bad as this is, let us remember that those who engage in human trafficking and drug smuggling are violent criminals, many of whom are working in conjunction with terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based terror organization that is under the control of Iran. Human trafficking and drug smuggling not only provide huge financial rewards for these criminal and terrorist organizations but provide terror organizations with the ability to move sleeper agents into the United States.
Consider some experts from my 2019 article, Jihad At The Border:
On April 30, 2019 the Justice Department issued a press release, Jordanian National Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy to Bring Aliens into the United States, which noted that in 2017 the smuggler smuggled aliens from Yemen, a “Special Interest Country” into the United States without inspection from Monterrey, Mexico to Piedras Negras in Texas.
As I reported in a previous article, on January 29, 2019 the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a hearing on Worldwide Threats that was predicated the "World-Wide Threat Assessment," that was issued by Daniel Coats, the Director of the Office of National Intelligence, which oversees the U.S. intelligence community. Additional witness included the heads of the FBI, CIA and other agencies.
The threat assessment warned about the dangers posed by transnational gangs such as MS-13 and went on to report:
TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME
Global transnational criminal organizations and networks will threaten US interests and allies by trafficking drugs, exerting malign influence in weak states, threatening critical infrastructure, orchestrating human trafficking, and undermining legitimate economic activity.
Drug Trafficking
The foreign drug threat will pose continued risks to US public health and safety and will present a range of threats to US national security interests in the coming year. Violent Mexican traffickers, such as members of the Sinaloa Cartel and New Generation Jalisco Cartel, remain key to the movement of illicit drugs to the United States, including heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and cannabis from Mexico, as well as cocaine from Colombia. Chinese synthetic drug suppliers dominate US-bound movements of so- called designer drugs, including synthetic marijuana, and probably ship the majority of US fentanyl, when adjusted for purity.
On April 17, 2018 the House Committee on Homeland Security, Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee, conducted a hearing on the topic, "State Sponsors Of Terrorism: An Examination Of Iran’s Global Terrorism Network.”
The prepared testimony of one of the witnesses, Dr. Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, included this alarming excerpt:
In recent years, Hezbollah’s Latin American networks have also increasingly cooperated with violent drug cartels and criminal syndicates, often with the assistance of local corrupt political elites….
This toxic crime-terror nexus is fueling both the rising threat of global jihadism and the collapse of law and order across Latin America that is helping drive drugs and people northward into the United States. It is sustaining Hezbollah’s growing financial needs. It is helping Iran and Hezbollah consolidate a local constituency in multiple countries across Latin America. It is thus facilitating their efforts to build safe havens for terrorists and a continent-wide terror infrastructure that they could use to strike U.S. targets.
Biden and his cohorts have discovered that indeed, “Crime does pay” and the cost is not only measured in money but in human suffering and even the loss of human lives.
George W. Bush Lobbies Republicans to Work with Joe Biden on Amnesty for Illegal Aliens
Former President George W. Bush is lobbying House and Senate Republicans to work with President Joe Biden on amnesty for illegal aliens.
In an interview with the Dispatch Podcast, Bush said Biden and Republicans ought to strike a deal to provide amnesty, at the least, to illegal aliens enrolled in or eligible for former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
“I think piecemeal probably makes sense and I think the president, if I could be so bold, is calling Republicans like-minded and saying ‘Let’s see if we can get something done,'” Bush said.
“Comprehensive may be too big of a reach right now,” Bush continued. “Like if they can get DACA done with some kind of border enhancement, you know plans to give Republicans comfort in voting for the bill, then all of the sudden there’s confidence to be gained.”
The statements come as Bush helps lead a charge among a Democrat-Republican coalition, big business interests, and the open borders lobby to provide amnesty to potentially millions of illegal aliens — a plan to which Biden gave a resounding endorsement in his first address to Congress last week.
In the address, Biden touted his amnesty for 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States while also urging Congress to pass two other amnesties: One for potentially 4.4 million illegal aliens and another for 2.1 million illegal aliens working on farms.
Bush, in recent weeks, revealed he is working the Koch network — run by the billionaire Koch brothers estate — to help Biden pass amnesty for illegal aliens. Not passing amnesty, Bush previously said, was his biggest disappointment as president.
The push comes as a survey from the pro-migration, Koch-funded Cato Institute reveals the extent to which Bush is out of step with Republican and conservative voters, as well as the majority of Americans.
The survey found 6-in-10 Americans want less overall immigration to the U.S., including 75 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of conservatives. Similarly, the survey showed 72 percent of Americans would prefer less immigration to the U.S. and more public benefits over more immigration and less public benefits.
Likewise, the survey confirmed opposing birthright citizenship is a mainstream Republican-held position.
In exclusive statements to Breitbart News, Republican staffers on Capitol Hill described Bush as an irrelevant globalist who does not represent the GOP’s base of voters or the majority of those in elected office.
“Republicans are well aware that his presidency was a national disaster on this issue as he failed to act when needed. Bush immigration policy has no impact today other than a reference on what not to do,” one House GOP aide said.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Report: Illegal Alien Sex Offenders Freed into U.S. Due to Biden ‘Sanctuary Country’ Orders
Illegal alien sex offenders are being freed into the United States thanks to President Joe Biden’s “sanctuary country” orders, a local media report details.
In February, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued orders preventing ICE agents from arresting and deporting illegal aliens unless they are terrorists, known gang members, or recently convicted of an aggravated felony. An analysis of the orders revealed they are likely to prevent about 9-in-10 deportations.
A report by FOX 29’s Yami Virgin in San Antonio, Texas, reveals that aside from local counties having to release criminal illegal aliens onto the streets, the U.S. Marshals are releasing illegal alien sex offenders from their custody as a result of the Biden orders.
Two illegal alien sex offenders — one in Austin, Texas, and another in Del Rio, Texas, — were released by U.S. Marshals after ICE agents were prevented from taking them into custody, sources in law enforcement told Virgin.
Officials with the U.S. Marshals Service said they do not comment on cases “that are the subject of ongoing or pending litigation.”
Last week, Virgin reported likely thousands of criminal illegal aliens have been released from local and county jails as ICE agents are stopped from taking them into custody. In San Antonio, alone, Virgin reported 36 criminal illegal aliens had been released into the community rather than turned over to ICE agents.
Those released illegal aliens had been arrested and charged with aggravated assault of a police officer, domestic violence, and drug crimes.
Multiple states, including Texas and Florida, are suing Biden for the sanctuary country orders — noting criminal illegal aliens who would have otherwise been deported are now being released directly into their communities.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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